Man Lost Half His Face To Cancer, Has It Reconstructed With Skin From His Arms And Legs

Tim McGrath went through one of the most harrowing experiences that can ever happen to a person and he managed to come out on the other side with a whole new perspective on life.

He began to feel an intense amount of pain in his jaw back in 2014. When he went to visit a physician to assist him with his pain and suffering, he was told that the pain was associated with the growth of a tumor.

He was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, which is one of the most rare forms of skin cancer and its level of rarity is only matched by its level of aggression. Unfortunately, there are very few early symptoms to speak of and that allows these tumors to advance more quickly than normal.

As the tumors continue to grow, they start to systematically destroy all of the systems that surround them. He spent a few months looking into various alternatives that would allow him to avoid surgery, but he was eventually forced to go under the knife. He spent seven weeks laid up in the hospital after the surgery and the surgery itself took 30 hours to perform.

The surgeons did their best to reconstruct Tim’s face after the surgery, but his body eventually rejected all of the attempts and his face was left looking raw and red as a result. The transplant continued to shrink and he went through infection after infection. He met with a new plastic surgeon and when the process was finished, he had a whole new face.

The surgeon used skin from Tim’s forehead, leg and forearm to rebuild the remainder of his face. These results have been a boon to Tim’s self confidence and he’s created a website called Tough Like Tim, so that he can document his experiences and offer hope to others who are in his same predicament.

The journey that Tim has been through is one that would keep most others from achieving true happiness and his ability to keep a smile on his face during a time like this is definitely inspirational. If he can maintain a pleasant demeanor after everything that he has been through, what is stopping the rest of us from doing the same when we are going through tough times?